Her

[litzie]

This was completely inspired by Wolfie's Leather Pants challenge over in the challenge section, which asked for a btvs character to go off the rails. This is not quite what she had in mind, and certainly there are no leather pants. I don't think it fits quite into the challenge, so I just thought I'd post it as a regular fic.

This takes place in the months following The Gift.

Giles

I closed my eyes and when they opened, here I was
in London. Oh, London of my youth. A shabby hotel off Hyde Park, the
street noise coming in the window open in the heat. The strange
shimmering and glowing dimness to the air. My one lamp, against the thick
darkness of the night. The bottle, not a decanter no, standards falling, the bottle
stands empty next to a hotel glass with film around the edge,
no I don’t mind though, no.
The amber liquid flows through my veins and finally,
I closed my eyes.

When they open, in the morning, there are black spots in my vision,
and the sun is much too high and the air warm and heavy. I sigh, a
moan, and rise so someone can change my sheets and I can go for another bottle.
Because until I do I will see her there, falling. In the ground. I will see
the others, disarray and danger, pain and anger and fear. Willow,
especially, she haunts me, eyes big and empty and dark
and dead. I always – for her – but now the bottle shakes
in my hand in my dim hotel room, and the last drop poured out, and finally,
I close my eyes.

When they open I know that I have failed her. The edges of sunrise are
creeping, slowly, so slowly, into the sky and there are birds
chirping too loud outside my window. Birds, in London. I
cannot fathom, at this moment. My bottle is empty, my glass
broken beside the table, its filmy rims lost forever in the tangle
of the carpet. I feel her eyes on me, accusing. Dawn, they say. You
should have found her, should have searched
hard, like you searched for me. Desperately, now, I pull up the covers and
I close my eyes.

There is no relief in darkness though, no release, from those
reproachful eyes. They blaze into me, disappointed, and I can only think of
the moments, flashing faster and whirling before me, the moments
when she smiled, when she was happy, when she was who she wanted to be.
A teacher’s satisfaction. A father’s pride.
I wanted to, I say silently, I tried. But you were lying there, falling, and I,
I was weak, I left, I closed my heart and –
the shards of glass, now, lying in the carpet, glinting in the rising sun –
I close my eyes.

[litzie]

Tara

She started with the sedative. I thought that was ok. I thought that was good, even, an end to the endless tears. I should have known, perhaps, that you can go on crying in sleep. I took care of her, of course. She took care of me, when there was nothing left of me but a shell, and the fear. She put me back together.

The pills, they weren’t working. So I did a spell – just a small spell – a spell to put her at ease. I thought, perhaps, that this would give her the time and space to heal. She was so broken, after we found the body. That blond hair, spread out over the debris like some angel had come down just to arrange it in a wave. Her white sweater stark against the broken metal. Willow was supporting me, but even through the confusion of my mind knitting back together, I could tell that I was supporting her as well.

She did not seek the ease of my spell though. She turned away from the peace I tried to offer. She seemed to want only oblivion. To escape into blackness and blankness and nothing. And I – I couldn’t make myself stop her.

Dawn was gone, then, the last few weeks. I was too lost myself to go look for her, though my stomach twinged when it rained, wondering where she was and if she was dry. I couldn’t – couldn’t spare a thought for her, though. All of my thoughts were taken up.

I did wonder, if I’m honest I did wonder – why did Willow disappear along with that jump? Why did her soul drain into the ground where we buried the body? Was their friendship so special – or – was it something more?

But most of the time, I think, I simply stood numb and watched as my lover killed herself bit by bit. And when the lights went out of her eyes the last time, I closed them for her.

[litzie]

Dawn

It is raining outside, in LA; I thought it never rained here. That’s what the advertisements promised, that’s what I came for. The sun. The ever-present, ever-rising sun. I thought. It’s what I was promised.

I am sitting on a couch that is older than me and stained unidentifiably, never good in this house. I would move, but my muscles have deserted me, traitors, and my body is a mess of bones and flesh, unmoving. I am tired.

Sometimes my eyes flick to some movement in the shadows, and I think of the things I have seen. I think of Doc, and that knife, which lives in my dreams. But the things in the shadows here are not monsters, not the kinds we knew. Men.

Spike knows where I am. He tracked me – the only one – and tried to get me to come away. To go back to a life with pink bedspreads and diaries with locks on them and people who don’t stay where you put them, people who leave. No thanks, is what I said to him. He left, couldn’t stand to stay I think, to see me here, but he comes back every once in a while. Brings me stuff. Says he doesn’t want me to get it from a dealer, to get a bad batch, but I think he just wants to be able to give me something. He seems to have fastened on to me the way he was on her, before.

Before the fall. Before that moment on the parapet when I was too slow and too stupid and god didn’t even know the word parapet. Before she jumped.

Why, why did she jump? Did she do it for me? It’s worse if she did. I wish she would have pushed me.

The shadows are moving again. Men. A man. He’s paid, it seems. He points at me. My muscles, phantoms before, flicker to life, and I rise. Walk with him. Shut the door. Strip. My track marks are blazing hot, seeming to sear me all over again. I lie down on the bed, and I close my eyes.